Rehearsal Dinner Rant - Kind of long.

Re: Rehearsal Dinner Rant - Kind of long.

• AddieCake member

  

  May 2013 edited May 2013

  I understand being frustrated, but how much work is there in planning a rehearsal dinner? I called a restaurant and made a reservation for X people and told them it was for a rehearsal dinner. Simple. If your fiance will be too busy, I suggest moving it from the backyard to a restaurant where you don't really have to do anything.

  What did you think would happen if you walked up to a group of internet strangers and told them to get shoehorned by their lady doc?~StageManager14

  

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• Nightingalejules member

  

  May 2013

  Maybe I'll do that... my hesitation is that here in Vancouver BC restaurants are WAY more expensive than in Kansas, where they're from. With a minimum guest list of about 30 people (immediate family and wedding party (several of whom are married with kids)) the cost of a restaurant dinner for all of them could easily exceed what they intended to spend. I thought of having a cookout style party because I thought they'd be able to afford it, (given that we had no idea of budget). I guess trying to get my FI to get the budget nailed down and then just book a restaurant if there's enough money to do it is the way to go.

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• rajahmd member

  

  May 2013

  I agree with PP's.  Just have FI find out for sure the budget.  Give them a deadline to figure out the budget if he continues to waver.  Then, plan something simple if you're afraid of a big time commitment.  You really only need a restaurant or food to have a rehearsal dinner.  If you want cake, you can just pick up a regular cake from a grocery shop bakery.  Most will write on them for you, or you can just get one with generic decorations and no writing.  Boom, done.  Good luck!

  

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• MuppetFan member

  

  May 2013

  I dunno about your dad, but you wouldn't want my dad planning anything. We'd be in the Home Depot parking lot eating sausages.
  

    
  You'll never be subject to a cash bar, gap, potluck wedding, or b-list if you marry a Muppet Overlord.
  
  

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• kgg6

  

  May 2013

  I can commiserate. My future In-laws are pretty anti-social, and wanted to throw the rehearsal dinner with us planning it. So we had to put together the list of people who would go, and e-mail out all those invites and recieve the 'regrets' of people who cannot attend the rehearsal. It's a little awkward to be doing something that your in-laws should want to do. Pro-tip: Find out who your future FIL wants at the rehearsal dinner way ahead of time. I had the issue that my MIL thought all cousins, aunts and uncles get invited, too... which would have been fine if she had done the e-mailing!
  

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• Nightingalejules member

  

  May 2013

  To Stagemanager 14. They did offer. They offered to "give us a rehearsal dinner." And as I mentioned in the original post, if they hadn't offered, (which I know they weren't obliged to do) I wouldn't have had to do it at all, since we weren't planning to have a rehearsal or a rehearsal dinner. Since they offered, I accepted, thinking that throwing us a party was a nice, if unexpected, thing for them to do. What I was upset about was that they weren't really planning to throw us a party, they were planning to give us some as yet undisclosed amount of money which was specifically tied to us planning another party. If I had known that this was the plan, I might have said "that's a lovely offer, but we're going to be so busy in the few days before the wedding, why don't we just forgo another event, order some pizza and visit while I do the flowers?"

  
  

  I believe I made my point clear in the original post. I didn't ask them for anything. They offered, but now their offer is creating more work for me and my fiance, that we wouldn't have had to do otherwise (or pay for) at all, because it wouldn't have happenned.

  
  

  As it turns out, my fiance is actually kind of relieved, since he was worried that his dad would have wound up booking a place where my FMIL wouldn't have been able to eat anything (he really likes spicy, ethnic foods and she really doesn't) so he's glad that he doesn't have to have any of those conversations. I'm sure it'll all work out, and my fiance is an excellent cook, so the backyard grilling plan will go ahead.

  
  

  Also, as someone pointed out, given that so many people who have families that won't get out of the decisionmaking, my problem of having some family that I wish were more involved is a pretty small one! I mostly needed to vent.

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• Angelface225 member

  

  May 2013

  I think that you're getting caught up in the semantics of what they said. A rehearsal dinner should not be a lot of work. If you just want pizza, then ask them to pay for pizza and beer. My in-laws said they wold 'take care' of the rehearsal, meaning pay. I plan on making a couple of phone calls to restaurants and then inviting people, overall one of the smaller components of our planning.

   

  

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• zitiqueen member

  

  May 2013

  Nightingalejules said:

  I just need to vent a little about this - I'm sure it will all turn out fine and I know everyone "means well" but this is frustrating and I can't talk to my fiance about it because he'd just feel bad. So here it is.

  When we announced our engagement last May (wedding is this Aug 5) my parents and his mom both offered to help us out financially, which is fantastic and I really appreciate it, since it is allowing us to have a much nicer wedding than we could have afforded otherwise. His dad told us that he would "give us a rehearsal dinner." Which is nice, except we aren't going to have a rehearsal, and I had no intention of having a rehearsal dinner at all. But whatever, it's a nice gesture, and also a traditional thing for the groom's parents to do. So we're going to have a rehearsal dinner.

  Fast forward to now, and since I know it's difficult to plan a party long distance, I took an opportunity to speak to the future FIL about the fact that I'd found a nice location for the rehearsal dinner, in the beautiful backyard of one of our neighbors. He said that he'd speak to my future MIL (they're divorced, but civil, and remember that she's already helped us out financially, and I hope to heaven that he's not expecting her to pitch in more money!) and then they'd finance the rehearsal dinner.

  Well, this threw me for a bit of a loop, because while I was totally prepared to be grateful and gracious about him spending his money throwing us a party right before the wedding (which we are trying to do on a tight budget, which means a lot of diy projects that we're already committed to that will take a lot of time) I had no idea that he intended that we needed to plan and organize this party, do all of the work for, and then he'll show up and be the hero because he payed for it. Of course now we've already told people about the rehearsal dinner and can't cancel it, which is what I'd rather do, really.

  My fiance, who is awesome, has offered to be the point man and take care of the planning, which is great, but again, we've got a ton of work to do leading up to the wedding itself, and I had really counted on him to be able to help me with things rather than spending all of his time planning a party for his Dad to take credit for! I'm so frustrated!

  I know this probably seems petty, but it would have seemed more petty and ungrateful to me to have refused their "assistance," especially since I had no idea that my FFIL wouldn't want to do any of the actual work. 

  Finally, given that we're now having to do this planning, it irritates the crap out of me that he's still foisting the final decision on budget off on his 25-years-ex-wife. We don't even know what our budget is for this party that he's supposedly throwing for us.

  Ultimately, it seems to me like he doesn't really want to do or pay anything for this wedding, which I wish he had just told us up front. He's a nice enough guy, but I can certainly see why my FMIL didn't stay married to him.  

  Anyway, that's my rant... like I said at the start, I'm sure it'll all work out, both parties will be great, his Dad will feel like a hero, and all the people who count will know who the real hero was (my fiance, for stepping in to cover his butt, and the rest of our wonderful family who will wind up pulling extra duties to cover mine!)

  
  All of this could have been avoided if you and your FI had just explained to him that you weren't having a rehearsal and then graciously declined his offer to pay for the dinner.

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